Sharing my experiences one stitch at a time.

Goodbye freshers week!

So my first week at University has been and gone, and although I wouldn’t go as far as saying that Freshers Week has been the best week of my life, it certainly has been a lot of fun! Travelling down last Friday took forever due to traffic on the M5, but thanks to our trusty Irish SatNav Sean we were navigated away from the worst of it and got to have a snout round some very pretty villages in Somerset. We got to campus early on Saturday morning, and as I was the first one to move in my mum and nanna stayed for quite a while and took me to Tescos for the all important “what I’ve forgotten to pack” shop. It was a bit weird moving all of my stuff to another place that wasn’t home, but now that everything’s unpacked and sorted out I’m feeling a lot more settled and like I actually live here now rather than just being on holiday.

The rest of my flat moved in gradually over the weekend and they’re all really nice which is good; the two guys are practically cooking gods so the kitchen always smells rather yummy! Sunday night was fun, as I got to meet up with those who I’d talked to on Facebook before getting here, so it was nice to put a name to a face and have someone to talk to who you already half knew (which after feeling rather homesick on the Saturday night was quite a relief). Monday consisted of welcome talks and other formalities, hiking down to one of the music buildings for a choral society taster which was a little disappointing, then back up the hill for the first MethAng meeting of the term (Methodist and Anglican, no it’s nothing to do with drugs!). The people there were lovely and it was just a really relaxed atmosphere which compared with the rest of the day was very well appreciated. Tuesday was the official welcome from the maths department, so more lectures and signing things there, then it was off to St Michael’s for my choral scholarship audition (I use the word audition loosely as it was basically sight-reading a setting of the Eucharist and a hymn together, then some simple vocal tests).

The choir there is absolutely awesome (hear us – http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_music.cfm?bandID=1020248) so I was extremely pleased to find out that I am now officially a choral scholar there for the year! Wednesday was a nice lazy day, with MethAng going to the cathedral for communion, then picnic outside on the green in this wonderfully unseasonable weather – thinking it would be all autumnal I’ve only brought three skirts and a pair of flip flops with me so am hoping it cools down soon. Thursday was fairly busy, had a wander into town to scope out the wool shops(once you’re off campus it’s fairly flat so nowhere near as strenuous as actually getting anywhere on campus, the hills are just ridiculously steep), then came back for the KnitSoc taster and spent most of the afternoon making a fuss of a guide dog belonging to one of the postgrads. Then back to St Michael’s for Michaelmas and more incense, which is not fun singing with if your throat is already very sore but there we are…

Friday was even lazier in some aspects than Wednesday, except I made the mistake of getting the bus to the out of town Tescos, thinking it would be a nice short ride; instead I spend 50mins each way on the bus and must have spent all of 20mins in the supermarket itself! But at least now I have proper food with which I can cook proper meals, currently have two lots of pasta sauce ready to go in the freezer and am planning to add chilli to it tomorrow. As the temperature kept climbing yesterday, a group of us from MethAng wandered down to the Quay for ice cream and epic pizza (in that order too) then came back and managed to work out how to use a laundrette style washing machine; everything is the same colour as what it was when it went in so I class that as a success. Today has been spent mostly in church as St Michael’s has Evensong on the first Sunday of the month, and battling around packed halls trying to sign up for societies, namely KnitSoc (10% off at Heavenly Yarns down the high street, yay!), MethAnd and the Maths Society. Now after some rather exuberant games of Spoons and the news that my church at home is to become a Minster in December I’m just about ready to crash out in preparation for my first lot of lectures tomorrow; granted that they don’t start until 1pm, but I have a lot of sorting to do before then and time does seem to fly here. So that’s my first week all done and dusted, I highly doubt that every week will be quite so jam packed, so I congratulate you if you managed to get through all of it!